


Performance

by crowleyshouseplant (orphan_account)



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Genderfluid, Other, Trans Character, Transgender
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-03-05
Updated: 2012-03-05
Packaged: 2017-11-01 12:42:45
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,491
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/356916
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/crowleyshouseplant
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>trans!Claire; brief explicit sex between consenting high school aged students; tw: self harm</p>
            </blockquote>





	Performance

**Author's Note:**

> Written for and prompted by [tectrices](http://tectrices.tumblr.com/)

Claire puts her things in boxes. She tapes them up, but doesn’t label them. “What are you doing?” Amelia says. She leans against door. Her eyes a little too wide because don’t blink or they’ll flood black. Her lips sag downwards. Her skin is too tight and too wrinkled, paper thin, ready to be crushed beneath curling fists. 

Claire looks down at her hands—flexing her fingers. Her skin is the same.

 Fragile and strong. 

Bones, muscles, flesh—the only things powerful enough to contain creatures powerful as a universe. 

She’s giddy, lightheaded, fierce urge to laugh but she doesn’t even open her mouth. She packs away the clothes she doesn’t wear. She hears the soft whisper of cloth as Amelia pulls her arms across her chest, then she’s gone, her socked feet crushing carpet fibers. 

When Claire comes down for dinner, she sees boxes on the curb. She pries open the tape. They are filled with Jimmy’s clothes—and she reaches out for one jewel blue dress shirt, buries her nose in it, smells the stale faux cologne smell of his deodorant, remembers how he wore it to church, and that’s why it hadn’t been washed because why bother if he only wore it once a week? 

She puts the shirt back, drags the box through the grass and up the stairs, it thunking after her, pulling at her shoulders like when she had been possessed by light, shoves it in the closet even though it’s too big and the door won’t close properly. 

She sleeps in her father’s shirt. She’s still awake when Amelia comes to kiss her goodnight, but keeps her eyes closed. Feels the dry press of lips against that place the demon had slapped with her hand. 

Amelia doesn’t mention the shirt the next morning. Doesn’t mention her father. Doesn’t mention Jimmy.  Just, “Go to school, Claire.”

So she does. 

Gravity forces her back together again. She wakes up cold, limbs sweaty, hand between her legs, gasping for breath, remembering how she had said yes, and how she had said no, and how it hadn’t mattered. She rubs the shirt closer around her. 

It doesn’t smell like her dad anymore. 

It smells like her.

Her sweat. Her salt.

She pries open her window, let’s the cold air in, biting the heat slicked against her skin. She’s all goosebumps and she doesn’t care as she curls her hair into her fist and cuts it off with the scissors she used earlier to cut out picture illustrations for a presentation on Shakespeare. 

She drops to the floor and does as many pushups as she can—not many. She walks out in the pre-dawn twilight. Runs around the block. No, jogs. Okay. Maybe lumbers, clutching her side, breathing harsh.

The pain and the sickness are visceral. She feels like she’s going to throw up, emptying herself, pouring out all the water and words and chunks that glut the hollow spaces inside of her, fill her up with all the wrong things. 

She goes to school like her mother wants her to. They move like she doesn’t want to in her last year of high school until, finally, it’s a new year, a new school, a new home.

New binder under his shirt. The teacher takes roll. “This is the name I’ve been given. Let me know if you want me to call you differently.” Get to the N’s and Claire raises his hand, opens his mouth to speak, words come out easier than he thought they would.

The teacher nods, repeats, gives him something that Amelia never could.

It feels weird. Weird like an echo. Like a copy of a copy of a copy of a copy.

He’s studying at the dining room table. Supposedly. Actually, he’s practicing drawing sigils with graphite on white paper. He draws with his head on his other arm—the muscle is hard now from pulling himself up to his chin or pushing himself from the floor. 

The door bell rings.  Amelia answers it, says, “Hello” because Amelia is always so polite to strangers even if she carries salt in her pocket and a knife in her hand behind her back.

Jane’s from school voice. “Yeah is Cas home?” 

He lifts his head, cranes his neck around so that he can see Amelia’s profile, the way her lip goes tight. “What?” 

“Castiel? Did I say that right? I’m always afraid I’m pronouncing it wrong.” She wraps her tongue along her front teeth, like she’ll find the answers there. “Cool name.”

Amelia turns to him, but he’s already rising to his feet, homework and sigils already abandoned. Her mouth is open, lips trying to move, tongue moving softly, trying to find the right consonant, the right vowel to begin.

“You,” she finally says, her voice hard, and he’s afraid, seeing the muscles tense all the way down her arm, that she’s going to hit him again.

He holds his hand out to Jane, hair so blonde and gold in the sun. “One sec,” he says, and closes the door.

Amelia’s already walking away. “I’m still Claire, too,” he says. 

Amelia says nothing. Faces the refrigerator. Pictures of Claire, when he was younger, are pasted across the front. His hair was so long and yellow. 

“Mom,” he says. Tries to touch her elbow, but she flinches away.

They stand, not looking at each other. He needs to leave. Can’t keep Jane waiting.

 He turns to go.

“He left, you know,” Amelia says. “You’re chasing after someone who started running before you. Before you were born. You’ll never catch up.” 

He bites his lip, leaves with Jane. They go to her room because her parents are gone. He takes off her clothes but stops her when she goes for his jeans—“No, this is about you—“

He strips Jane until she’s naked. “This okay?” he asks, holding up long cotton gym socks, and she licks her lips eagerly, nods her head, so he loops her wrists to her headboard. Wets his fingers with lube, strokes her lips and clit until she’s panting, hips tilting up, asking for more.

Breathy, chopped up sounds click in her throat, against her teeth. 

“You want more?” he says

She nods as he pulls his hand away.

 “You have to say yes, I can’t if you don’t say yes,” he says.

“Yes,” she says, “fuck’s sakes yes—“

She presses against him, tries to fuck down against his hand, but he moves away, then crawls up her body, finger still teasing her. Hisses in her ear, “Say it with my name.”

“Yes, Castiel—yes,” and he thrusts his hands up inside, thumb hard on her clit, fingers finding her g-spot, and she comes so hard.

When she’s done, he unties her.

Leaves before she’s even got time to pull on her undies and bra.

Thinks about returning her calls, but never does.

Ey drives out of town, to the mountains with the forests and the rocks and the dirt. There’s a hiking path nearby, but ey ignores it—too tame, too safe. Ey starts off slow, a loping trot, sneakers crushing dropped pined needles, releasing their scent. When ey gets hot, ey strips out of eir shirt, lets it drop by the wayside. 

Runs faster until eir feet feel too big for eir shoes, so ey kicks them off, peels out of eir socks, flexes eir toes in the dirt.

This isn’t the first time ey has done this. 

Eir soles are tough leather.

Ey unbuttons eir jeans until there is real danger of tripping, pauses to push them down past thighs and ankles. Sweat drips like rain from eir neck, from eir forehead. Arms and hands are already streaked with mud, dirt crushed hard under eir fingernails from slipping, from falling and getting up again.

Eir heart scuds against eir bones as ey sucks down breath after breath before starting again, naked except for eir binder, branches and shrubbery catching and tearing eir skin. 

Runs until ey flings emself into a clearing, upon dead leaves waiting to be blown away by the wind. It itches against eir skin. Salty sweat stings where eir flesh has been rubbed raw from the binder.

Nausea and headiness rise, and ey presses emself close against the ground, mouth open, drinking in the air as the world spins around em. 

Eir heart slows. Ey shivers as the heat leaves eir body. Ey staggers up, walks back the way ey came. Picks up eir clothes, puts them on.

They are dirty.

Almost forgets to drive back into town, but does anyway. Amelia’s already fallen asleep on the couch, legs curled up close to her chest. 

Ey reaches out to her, touches her forehead, cups her cheek. Presses a single kiss to her temple.

Gets back into the car and drives away again, following the reports of a group of people who swore they saw a pillar of fire.


End file.
